Box aims to expand role of cloud apps

European boss says developers will support growth

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Cloud service provider Box expects its apps developer community to play a growing role in the expansion of its European business, according to the chief of the operation.

David Quantrell, Senior VP and General Manager, Europe for Box, told TRPro that it has more scope to grow this part of the business following the recent acquisition of Crocodoc, an HTML5 document embedding service which provides a rendering agent, and Folders, which supports the development of apps on Apple interfaces.

Quantrell said this should add more fuel to a trend in which Box has built a community of developers to use its platform, often without its brand name, in the creation of specialised apps.

"They account for a relatively small proportion of our business at the moment, but we think it will expand," he said.

Box started a developer community in the UK when it opened its London office last year, and is taking similar steps in other markets. Some of the development takes place under free format and some under licence. The company also provides seed capital for some projects.

Core business

Quantrell also emphasised the importance of its core business for file sharing and collaboration within businesses.

He said: "We see huge growth across core business where customers are buying Box and installing it as native. That's why we've got the expansion in Europe we started in autumn of last year (with the London office opening)."

He hinted at the possibility of the company setting up a division to serve small and midsized businesses in the UK market, as it has already done in Germany. But more immediately it plans to concentrate on growing the business in the eight verticals it has established: manufacturing, finance, legal, consumer packaging, knowledge workers, education, health and telecommunications.